1

So a few years ago I caught an episode of Oprah where Dr. Oz was on talking about how (gasp!) any meat that you ingest essentially sits and rots in your intestines and isn&#39;t digested in a useful way. Oh, and it stops you up - slows the movement of food through your body. If I recall, this is a popular assertion of vegetarians and vegans.

I&#39;ve googled trying to find evidence to support or deny this but so far I haven&#39;t found anything other than short snippets saying "this is false." No more detailed explanation (though maybe none is needed).

For the record, I think it&#39;s bull. I&#39;m positive our bodies are capable of digesting meat but I can&#39;t find support of it. Anyone have explanations or know of resources I can go to?

1

Basically, when people make claims like this, it is up to them to prove it, not their opponents to disprove it. There is no reason to believe that meat rots in the intestine unless there was empirical evidence that it does. Since that empirical evidence does not exist, it probably doesn&#39;t exist.

To be honest, I bet no one takes the time to disprove it because it is such a stupid claim.

1

1

A Buddhist I once was acquainted with tried to sell me on vegetarianism and said this same thing and I had to stop him mid-sentence in protest. I said that theory went against the science I had learned: acid in the stomach denaturing the meat protein, enzymes breaking down the meat immediately. Yeah, protein will move slower through the stomach than carbs because protein starts to get broken down in the stomach whereas most of the carb digestion takes place in the small intestine so it makes sense that our bodies would want to slow down the progression of proteins through the GI tract.

1

I know people who believe this. I&#39;ve googled this as well for evidence and didn&#39;t really find anything. I have read a couple of (high level) anatomy books and my understanding is the muscles lining the intestines move in a wave like rhythm, and EVERYTHING moves along at the same pace.

1

There are a couple of different layers of muscle to the the intestines and there are different muscle movements during the digestion food. At times, there will be segmental contractions so that the food gets pushed back and forth, helping to mush it up and mix it with your digestive enzymes. Then there are also the wave-like moments to help move things along.

I&#39;m pretty sure that constipation happens in all sorts of diets and there are many causes - dehydration, malfunctioning bowel, drugs.

1

1

I&#39;ve heard this one from vegetarians and vegans, as well as some proponents of "alkaline-only" diets. I have no idea where anyone arrived at this conclusion.

It does make sense that meat takes longer to digest than some other foods, but how is that a bad thing?

If you&#39;re using time spent in the intestines as the gauge of how healthy a food is, then the "healthiest" food would be sugar water, as it&#39;s digested and enters the bloodstream almost instantly.